By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — Former Sen. John Celona “was a corrupt public official who sold his vote,” federal prosecutor Daniel Petalas told a jury in federal district court Monday, and former CVS executives John Kramer and Carlos Ortiz came along and bought it.

On the first day of Ortiz and Kramer’s trial on 23 counts that include conspiracy, bribery and honest services mail fraud, Petalas described how the two pharmacy honchos arranged for Celona to be paid $45,000 in consultant fees over a period of four years to influence Celona’s votes and official actions on several pieces of legislation that were of financial interest to the company.
“Kramer made the decisions, Ortiz made them happen,” Petalas told a jury of 12 men and four women, four of whom will be designated as alternates, adding: “they couldn’t have believed they were doing something legitimate.”
To the contrary, argued Kramer’s lawyer David Fein, who painted “a legitimate relationship” between Celona and the Rhode Island based drugstore giant “to improve (CVS’s) image in the community,” especially among senior citizens.
Kramer and Ortiz “acted without criminal intent,” Fein asserted, and neither man committed a crime.
 Thomas Kiley, attorney for Ortiz, told the jurors that Ortiz “thought the idea of hiring a legislator was a bad one, that it made a bad appearance. But he said Ortiz’ boss, Kramer, “liked going on Celona’s television show and promoting CVS.” Kiley allowed that Kramer was “perhaps vain, but vanity is not a crime.”
As an “honest, earnest employee,” Kiley said, Ortiz carried out his boss’ wishes.
The trial before Judge Mary Lisi is expected to take up to four weeks. The highlight will be the testimony of Celona, who has testified in other federal bribery trials since being sentenced to two and a half years in prison for admitting to accepting bribes to influence legislation as a senator, a member of the Senate Corporations Committee and later chairman of that panel. Celona has been transferred to the Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls so he will be available to testify, probably sometime this week.
The prosecution is the latest in the “Operation Dollar Bill” effort to ferret out corruption at the Rhode Island Statehouse.
Both the prosecutor and defense attorneys spent much of their opening statements concentrating on a piece of legislation called “Pharmacy Freedom of Choice,” or “Any Willing Provider.” Any Willing Provider is the term being used in court, often abbreviated to “AWP.”
That legislation would have stopped Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island from using a closed network of pharmacies where subscribers would have to go to get their prescriptions filled. CVS, as one of those pharmacies, opposed the legislation.
Fein said it was Celona who reached out to CVS looking for consulting work through lobbyist Joseph Walsh.
At the time Celona contracted to become a consultant in 2000, Fein said, “AWP had no chance of passing and Celona’s vote was meaningless.”
Fein said Kramer hired Celona “to do legitimate public relations services. It was only after Celona was indicted on federal bribery charges that he changed the way he described his relationship to CVS as a corrupt one.
Kramer appeared on Celona’s cable television program, “The Celona Statehouse Report,” six times between April, 2000 and May, 2003, to publicize events such as the CVS Charity Golf Classic, the CVS 5K Road Race in Providence and CVS’s Highlander Charter School.  
With each of the half-hour shows getting 30 airings at various times over the course of a month – Kramer sometimes had to ask for a segment to be pulled after it had become too dated – Fein said CVS was getting 60 hours of TV time for the “modest” $12,000 a year it was paying Celona. Celona also visited senior citizen centers and high-rise complexes on behalf of the company.
Celona’s contract was terminated, the jury was told, after Kramer was succeeded in his job by James Smith, and Ortiz said he did not see the value of Celona’s cable show.
The trial will continue today.